in unison to process and render an image. However, the technologies that allowed for the use of multiple graphics cards in tandem have largely been phased out. As of 2021, only Nvidia's NVLink remains and at that, only on one of their top-of-the-line models, the GeForce RTX 3090 and the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. The decline of these technologies are largely due to the decrease in support for multiple cards in applications and indeed, games, as well as the decrease in returns on investment, or in other words, consumers were paying a heavy premium for little to no improvement, or in some cases, even performance decrease. A high-end graphics card will also use more electricity, or have a higher power draw, than a lower-end card. This power draw only increases as the number of graphics cards increases, adding another cost to a high-end computer. Overclocking a graphics card, or multiple, also adds additional power draw. However, as the number of graphics cards increases, the performance gains by adding another graphics card decreases significantly due to the complexity of more than two GPUs communicating to each other in an efficient way. This is another example of depreciating returns. Memory Random access memory, or RAM, acts as a cache for non-graphical resources that games use. Enthusiasts will often purchase the fastest RAM, which has a lower latency, thus offering negligible performance increases in most cases. For gaming, a higher frequency of memory than would be necessary for an average computer user can offer some benefits. This has led to certain motherboards supporting RAM overclocking, with the new XMP standard. As RAM frequency is increased, however, the stability of the system decreases, increasing the risk of random computer shutdowns. 8 GB is usually the recommended amount of memory for gaming computers, as some 64-bit games can use over 4 GB of RAM. Most gaming PCs as of the early 2020s have at least 8 GB of RAM. While 16 GB of RAM is often considered a sweet spot for gaming, 32 GB of RAM is increasingly used for future-proofing. The current maximum amount supported on consumer hardware is 128 GB (for quad-channel configuration), with 8 slots on some LGA 2066 motherboards, each slot supporting up to a 16 GB DIMM. Storage In gaming PCs, it is desirable to have fast hard drives, which will generally result in shorter loading times in games. For